Professor Alison Peirse

Profile

My research asks, what does the horror genre reveal about gender? What happens when we consider women as makers of horror, rather than objects of terror? And when, how and why do our horror film histories exclude the creative contributions of women?

To answer these questions, I write books and essays, I make films, and I exhibit work at, and curate film festivals.

My books include Rewriting Television (Rutgers UP, 2024), Women Make Horror: Filmmakers, Feminism, Genre (Rutgers UP, 2020), After Dracula: The 1930s Horror Film (IB Tauris, 2013), Korean Horror Cinema (Edinburgh UP, 2013). You can find out more about, and watch many of my films on my website.

From 2022 – 2024, I was an AHRC Research, Development and Engagement Fellow, during which I worked on my next book Her Chainsaw Heart: A Feminist History of Horror Cinema, a journal special issue Bodies as Battlefields, and created and delivered Doing Women’s (Global) (Horror) Film History, a videographic training programme and special issue on horror cinema made by the global majority.

I have worked as a judge, programmer, special guest and panelist for many international film festivals, including Sitges (Spain), Leeds International Film Festival (UK), Offscreen (Belgium), Etheria Film Night (USA), Final Girls Berlin (Germany), Ax Wound (USA), Kurja Polt (Slovenia), KurzFilm Festival (Germany) and SlashFilm Festival (Austria).

Responsibilities

• Director of Practice Research and Innovation

Research interests

My academic research is in horror film, with a focus on illuminating women’s invisible or overlooked contributions to the production of the genre. Within this area, I focus on how, when and why we write histories of women’s contributions. To do this, I work at the intersection of production studies and feminist film historiographies. I consider how we might think through these research findings in written essays, festival programming and videographic criticism.

• Feminist Horror Cinema

Qualifications

• PhD in Cultural Research, University of Lancaster
• PG Cert in Academic Practice and Learning, University of Northumbria
• MA in Visual Culture (Distinction), University of Lancaster
• BA (Hons) Media and Popular Culture (First Class), Leeds Metropolitan University

Professional memberships

• Member of Women's Film and Television History Network
• Member of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, including Horror SIG
• Member the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies, including founding member of Horror Studies SIG & Practice Research SIG
• Member of MECCSA, including Women's Network and Practice Network
• Member of the Screenwriting Research Network
• Founding Member of the Northern Television Research Group
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Research groups and institutes

• Creative Writing at Leeds

Current postgraduate researchers

• Tessa Saito King